A fellow blogger and gardener now living in Austria said it very well in her recent garden post “Practically Nothing Left To Do”. After all the rushing to get things ready for summer growing season, we now enter a phase in which there is little to do but wait. The day to day progress is so difficult to perceive that it seems nothing is happening out there in the garden.

Needless to say this is not my favorite time of year in gardening, I like it much better when I am running around getting things done, not just waiting for nature to do its thing.

This week was definitely quiet around here, I had enough time to build a second compost pen. It is now easy to turn the compost and the whole process seems to be going much faster. On the other hand, I have not been able to dial it in right with the compost tumbler. The temperature does not seem to get high enough in there, and the results have been marginal. I may re start a new batch in it with grass clippings and chopped up brown leaves.

We are still harvesting a nice variety of greens on somewhat regular basis. If last week was salad week, this can be called pea week. I only planted 6 square feet with peas, just as a novelty since I had never been successful with them in the past.

In eight days we have collected 436 gr of super crunchy and sweet snap peas. The first few batches never made to the table, as we munched them while making breakfast. Now that we have satisfied that craving we will likely have enough to use when we make a stir fry one of these nights.

The tomatoes are growing nicely, all plants have fruit and flowers on them. A couple pepper plants have started showing interest in putting out flowers, this is the earliest I have seen peppers do that in my garden. I hope for a good crop of the extra hot ones I planted this year. The eggplants have been somewhat lagging in development and do not look too happy. I have attributed the slow growth of some plants to the mild, or rather chilly spring we just had, but others like the kohl rabi have been shining all season, let’s just see what the future brings, after all this is the first week of summer.

Yesterday one of our summer squash gave us its first baby, a happy and bouncing 290 gr baby zucchini.

Like with all of my zucchinis, it was the result of manually assisted pollination, as I still don’t trust the bugs around here to do the job right. That zucchini will also find its way into some delicious stir fry.

This week I also freed some squares after removing the gigantic cauliflower plants that were occupying the space and shading every other plant in the bed. I must admit that the cauliflower and broccoli were somewhat a disappointment. The size of all the flowers was rather small for such huge plants. Next year I may not devote so much space to growing these even if I figure out where I went wrong.

My new seedlings, spaghetti and winter squash, water melon and cantaloupe are growing nicely in their grow bags. This week I will thin them out further so as to keep a max of two plants per bag. I like the way plants grow in these root air pruning containers, and how easy and inexpensive it is to make them. Next season I will use them to grow many other crops.

Much less impressive, but equally rewarding has been the production of castings from my one tote worm farm. Last week I collected a heaping 5 quarts of castings and about a cup of concentrated compost tea, both of which I quickly put to use around the garden.

My fun project at this time is trying to grow lettuce and water cress in our pond. We no longer keep fish in it, as the herons made away with a few hundred dollars worth of koi over a two year period. Nonetheless, given the growth of all the marginal and submerged plants in the pond, I am confident there is abundant nutrients in the water to support a few lettuces floating on rafts. I will update their development in subsequent posts, if you have experience with this, please share in a comment.

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Garden’s looking good!!!! I’m curious to see how your lettuce will produce – such a novel idea. I can’t believe how quickly everything matured – especially your zucchini. By the way, did you do anything special to get your peas to bloom again or will they do that naturally?

See, you’re so much better at all this stuff than I am; succession planting never even occurred to me, lol! Although the weather’s been unseasonably cooler, I’m not sure planting new peas will help me just now – my lettuces are preparing to bolt. Oh well, maybe I can get in a fall planting.
Oh, I failed to thank you earlier for the mention & link – that was awfully nice of you; thank you.
I’m really enjoying watching your garden grow; it’s so diverse and huge! Keep the photos coming!

I totally feel you about this time of the season. It’s less exciting, but I do get a certain amount of gratification from “going out to check my plants.” Since all my stuff is in containers I need to water it almost daily and I love trying to see what changed since the last time I went out to check my plants.

Your garden looks so diverse and wonderful. I only see a few tomatoes poking out on my plants, but lots of pepper progress. I’ve already picked a whole jalapeño!